


A String of Eggplant Emojis

by SekritOMG



Category: South Park
Genre: College, Dick Pics, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 12:01:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7170230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SekritOMG/pseuds/SekritOMG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyle micro-aggravates his way into Stan's pants, finally. #south park trash #hbd bebe! #this party sucks</p>
            </blockquote>





	A String of Eggplant Emojis

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the magnificent Julads for beta-reading. This story is markedly better for her input, believe me.

Kyle feels like he’s got the worst case of blue balls in the known universe. Is it true? Who knows. All Kyle can say on the topic is that he’s been journaling about his life obsessively since sophomore year of high school, and so he can read the development of his ongoing flirtation with Stan and wallow in a torturous kind of horny self-pity: in the bathroom at the bowling alley where Bebe was throwing her sweet sixteen, Stan locked both of them in a stall and confessed that he was into guys.

“Oh my god, me too,” had come out of Kyle’s mouth before he’d even realized he was saying it, and he’d only been half-aware that he was lurching upward to plant his lips against Stan’s in that awful-smelling bathroom. Then Stan had said, “Do you remember when my dad took me to see Steely Dan a couple summers ago at Red Rocks? I got a handy from some dude at the urinals during the encore.”

“You um — wait, what?”

“He was making these faces at me all during the concert — I didn’t really want to be there, right, and my dad made me go, and this maybe like 40 or something ... I dunno, he had gray hair, but he was kind of okay-looking, and he’d been kind of giving me looks all during the concert, and we kept locking eyes, and when they came back for the encore he sort of looked at me and like, nodded, and he started to leave, and I followed him—”

“Your dad let you follow that guy?”

“He didn’t let me, I just said I had to go to the bathroom,” Stan had said, looking like he regretted this. “I dunno, my dad had his lighter out and wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Stan,” Kyle had breathed, “that’s so _fucked up_ ,” with the pure intention of consoling him with kisses. But then Butters had come in and screamed, “Fellas, are you guys in here! They’re lighting the candles, you’re gonna miss it!” And Stan had smiled sadly and said, “Okay, dude, we’re coming” and unlocked the bathroom stall and stumbled out, looking confused. On the way to the lane Bebe’s mother had rented, Stan had quietly said, “I won’t tell anyone you’re into guys if you don’t tell anyone about, um, Red Rocks.”

“Red Rocks,” Kyle had repeated stupidly; the words were like a knife through his heart. Over five long years they’d become torturous to Kyle, like a code word for the worst pain of his own jealousy. On that afternoon at the bowling alley, Kyle had said, “I don’t care who knows I’m gay,” though he didn’t tell anyone else for another year. Stan waited and came out to his parents a few weeks after. They’d spent the rest of high school – and the beginning of college – treading dangerously close to the edge of friendship, sharing little tidbits of sexual information. First it was casual discussions about cute boys, then weird masturbatory details that felt a little too personal. Then it was pictures of interesting dicks, which Stan was great at critiquing: “This guy’s got to stop taking shots of his D in the shower,” he wrote in an e-mail with one link. “It looks so dark in there, and he’s got so much hair, that I can’t tell where his gut ends and his dick begins, seriously. Depressing, because it looks big.” (With a sad-face emoji.)

Or, “This dude may or may not have slammed his own dick in a fucking over door or something, have you ever seen a completely flat dick before? I haven’t, I swear to god.”

Kyle had made a point to ask him, at dinner that night, “Have you ever seen any dicks before? I mean, other than mine? And that guy’s at Red Rocks?”

They’d been eating pintxos at a pop-up at a little brewery in downtown Boulder, to celebrate the release of a special-edition beer for Cinco de Mayo, which was several weeks down the road. Kyle, a poli/Spanish double-major, had seen an ad for the pop-up stapled to the announcements board after his advanced conversation seminar and had resisted blurting out to anyone working that night that Cinco was Mexican and pintxos were Spanish.

“I’ve never seen anyone’s dick other than yours,” Stan confessed. On multiple inappropriate occasions, Kyle had whipped it out in front of Stan: peeing at a concert, peeing at house parties, once while immaturely trick-or-treating freshman year of college, and once when Stan had dared Kyle to beat off for him while they were watching _Blue is the Warmest Color_ , and he’d gotten a boner during one of the sex scenes. “Do you always get off to girl-on-girl?” Stan had asked, blushing stupidly, clearly hard after Kyle’s little performance.

“This is the only time,” Kyle had admitted. “And also one other time.”

“Huh,” was all Stan had said, and he’d been moody, still, at the end of the night when he left to head back up to his dorm room.

Kyle knows Stan likes him. He knows. He knows that it’s been five years to the day. They’re at Bebe’s twenty-first, at a bar on Pearl Street. It’s a big mess, an unruly mix of South Parks stuck at Boulder and randos from Bebe’s years on the sorority circuit.

For some reason, Stan’s hand is on Kyle’s ass, and the music is so loud they have to scream a little to hear each other. “Greek dudes are always gay,” Stan sneers over a craft cocktail, kind of drunk already. “I promise you, I swear to god.”

“Maybe some of them,” Kyle agrees. He talked a guy from Zeta into letting him blow him in the library after midnight, once. It was just a couple of weeks ago, actually. Stan doesn’t know that.

“There’s just something so weird and homoerotic about the whole thing. Like, it’s pure overcompensating.”

They do this thing sometimes where they stand in the corner of the bar, or the party, or the concert, or whatever, and huddle together over their drinks and get close. Too close. Stan’s so close to Kyle that Kyle can feel Stan’s breath on his lips and smells what Stan is drinking, a cucumber-ginger shrub with sake and sherry. Kyle doesn’t want to know if it’s good. It sounds stupid, but it’s the special cocktail the mixologist dreamt up for Bebe’s birthday. Since Stan is a good sport he’s drinking one, though Kyle’s chosen his usual pear cider.

Their thighs are touching. “This one guy sent me a dick pic,” Kyle shouts, pulling his phone out of his jeans. He’s a little too drunk to handle their thighs touching, his cider, and his phone at one time. He regrets pulling the phone out at all when Stan takes his hand off of Kyle’s ass and leans over the screen.

“That’s the worst,” Stan marvels. “Why’s his face in it?”

“I dunno. He’s not great at taking them I guess.”

“What?”

The music is whiny top-forty shit, and it’s making Kyle want to die. “How’s that cocktail?” he asks.

“What’d you say before that?”

“Just, I don’t think this guy is very good at taking dick pics.”

“I’m way better at it.”

“What?”

“We need to get out of here,” says Stan. “It’s too loud. Did you want to try this?” He motions to Kyle with the highball glass, and when Kyle shakes his head, Stan downs the rest of it. They kiss Bebe goodnight, and she says, “But I feel like you just got here!”

“I have a test,” Kyle lies, almost certain that this is it, this is the night he and Stan are finally going to bone. He’s been rereading his old journal entries, marveling at how fucked-up it is that they’ve been all over each other for five fucking years, – probably longer than that if Kyle’s being honest with himself – and they’re never done it. It’s not like Stan doesn’t hang out in his boxers when Kyle comes over to marathon full runs of British historical dramas.

When they’re standing out on Pearl Street, bundled up in their early spring toggle coats, Stan asks, “Have you ever seen this blog? It’s where people critique dick pics.”

“People critique dick pics?” Kyle repeats.

“Well, one person, I think. Check it out.” Stan’s tongue pokes out of his mouth while he pulls up the site on his phone, and Kyle flashes back to some elementary school drama where Clyde described kissing someone as licking their tongue with your tongue, and it’s very difficult for Kyle to not lean over and get on his tiptoes and do that to Stan in this very moment.

“Here.” Stan hands the phone to Kyle. “See, the blogger gives the dick pics grades. It’s not all about the quality of the dick, like — there are some chicks in strap-ons and trans dudes and so on, you know, it’s not about size but like, the pic itself.”

“Soon they’ll run dick pic reviews in _The Independent_ ,” Kyle jokes. He covers university politics for the paper when he’s not doing the 70 other things he’s counting on to get him into law school a year hence.

“I think you should apply.” Stan watches Kyle scrolling through the blog.

“No,” Kyle says, enrapt, “you’re the expert around here.”

“You’re the one guys are actually sending dick pics to.”

“It was one guy, and he would not have made the cut on this blog.”

“Yeah,” Stan agrees. “I know.”

“Like you could take a better picture,” Kyle says, though what he really means is, “Like you would be a better lay.” Of course, he hopes that Stan would reply, “ _You know I can_.”

Instead, Stan says, “I already have,” and he starts walking down the street, back toward campus.

“Wait, what?” Kyle hustles to catch up. “You _what_?” His world comes crashing down. It’s like fucking Red Rocks all over again. “Your dick is on the internet?” he manages to sputter.

“Well, yeah, but — it’s not like it’s labeled. No one knows it’s mine.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Well, why don’t you scroll through the archives and try to find it?” Stan asks.

“Easy,” says Kyle, though he’s barely thinking, still shaking. He starts pulling out his phone.

“You wanna make it interesting?”

“Your dick is already interesting to me.”

“I’m sure it is,” says Stan, “but, I mean, with a little wager.”

“What kind of wager?”

“If you can find my dick on that blog, then you can have it.”

“Have what?” Kyle asks.

“You know.” Suddenly, under the glow of neon signs and a street lamp, Stan is blushing. “ _My dick_.”

“Oh,” Kyle whispers. He puts his phone away.

It’s the most charged moment between them, ever, which takes Kyle completely off-guard: they’re not touching, they’re not alone, and they’re both wearing coats, and Kyle can’t even see if Stan is turned on. But Kyle knows he’s hard as fuck, the kind of hard that makes him want to sprint back to his dorm and wedge a chair under the door so his roommate can’t get in. He can feel himself leaking, a little, which has never happened before. He feels kind of like a kid who’s pissed himself during class: surely everyone knows how bad he wants this. He’s not sure if he should be overjoyed or furious that Stan’s got better self-control.

“You look like you’re about to swoon.”

“No, fuck,” Kyle says. It sounds pretty stupid coming out of his mouth. “How hard could it be?”

“Well, that’s the challenge. I might be pretty hard, or not hard at all. You’d have to look through the whole blog and like, figure it out.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“Then you don’t get my dick.”

“What do I get to do with it when I get it?” Kyle asks.

“Anything you want,” says Stan. “If you win, it’s yours.”

“Very good.” It’s all Kyle can manage as a group pours out of the bar they were just at. They’re noisy, and Kyle wants to take a swipe at them as they brush past him and Stan on the street. “Walk me back to my dorm,” Kyle insists, and he thrusts his arm out for Stan to take.

It’s a weirdly quiet walk, neither of them saying much.  It takes a little longer than usual, about 25 minutes, because they’re both going slowly, only making comments about incidental things on the street: an invitation to a student film festival in chalk on the sidewalk, or fewer people than usual waiting to get into this restaurant or that one.

“I’ve got to do the reading for Brit lit,” Stan says at one point. “I forgot about that, crap.”

“What are you reading?” Kyle asks.

“I’m supposed to be reading Romantic poetry. Like Wordsworth and some crit or something.”

“Oh.” Kyle feels stupid. He actually knew that.

“I don’t know what it is. It’s on e-reserves. I’ll ... figure it out, I guess.”

“Ah.” It’s difficult for Kyle to care when he’s walking with a boner the size of Montana. His mind is elsewhere — he has to get on the internet. He wants Stan’s dick. He’s dying for it. No other dick will do; he’s been craving it for years. They’ve been headed here for years. When Kyle has a goal he becomes fixated. And, Well, here’s the goal: get on that dick pics-rating website. Find Stan. With any luck, profit. Kyle’s so out of it, thinking about how easy it’s gonna be, that when they reach his dorm and Stan lets go of Kyle’s arm, Kyle is actually a little surprised. “So, yeah,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“Well,” says Stan. “Good night.” He pecks Kyle on the cheek. He’s never done that before.

“Are we dating now?” Kyle calls after Stan.

“Good night, dude. Text me if you find my dick.” Some girls leaving the dorm giggle at this, but it just makes Kyle want it more.

* * *

Kyle doesn’t dislike his roommate, and sometimes he wonders if, had he met the guy in some situation that didn’t involve living virtually atop one another, he might have even found him not-horrible. This is the best Kyle can do in terms of personal charity; he burned out on the roommate thing very early on, like well before Thanksgiving of his freshman year. He had come into the situation with a fiery passion for list-making (“things our dorm room needs!”) and task-assigning, which he handled through a whiteboard. When Kyle realized, as he scrubbed puke off of his new Adidas the morning after Halloween that year, that he was never going to be able to control his living situation, his zen about everything really just imploded. Also, he is still, even as a junior, just a little bit furious that Stan hadn’t wanted to live together.  “Being roommates destroys friendships” felt, at the time, like a soft blow, a polite brush-off. Also, the thought of Stan undressing, sleeping, and beating off in the same space as another guy was unbearable to Kyle. Now, he’s used to it and, also, the amount of beating off to gay porn that Kyle gets up to in the space he shares with his straight roommate is kind of its own turn-on.

Still, it’s a relief that guy isn’t home right now.

He sets upon the task with determined fury. Kyle makes a folder of every image on the blog, and it takes all damn night. He sails through his first task: he discards all of the obvious wrong answers. Some of the dicks belong to people of color, and thought many of them are quite hot, those aren’t Stan’s, so they’re out. Kyle actually jerks off to one, a pretty bad picture of a really, really nice dick. It’s a full-body shot and the dude’s got a great physique, which Kyle is loath to admit he finds super compelling. But it’s more about the task at hand for him, actually, and midway through bringing himself off he realizes that he’s staring at the pic without even thinking about that dick itself. Instead, he’d thinking about winning Stan’s actual dick like a shiny prize, bragging to his classmates about the perfect boyfriend who’s been right under his nose the whole time. It’s not like Kyle hasn’t brought himself off to thoughts of Stan fucking him before, but it’s the idea of winning that gets him to come right now. He wipes his hand off on a paper towel and goes through the pictures again, deleting the ones of women in strap-ons and those belonging to trans people. Some good pictures, some hot people, even if not all people to whom he’s attracted — but, not Stan. Kyle saves his work to Dropbox and goes to bed. He lies awake for a little while, worrying that he should have made a spreadsheet before he started. This worrying exhausts him, and at some point he drifts into sleep.

He wakes up the next morning to a text: “Find me yet?”

Kyle texts back, “Go to class.” Stan consistently takes early classes so he can be done with his day at 2 and spend the rest of it fucking around. Kyle can’t even say he faults this strategy, although it’s annoying to get messages from Stan about the tacos he’s eating, flash games he’s playing, and porn he’s getting off to in the middle of the weekday. Freshman year Stan was on the hockey team, and he was good at it, as everyone in South Park knew he would be. Kyle could admit to a little jealousy, partly due to the free tuition and D-I perks, but mostly it was the attention Stan got from the other guys on the team. Some of them had to be gay, Kyle figured, because the law of percentages worked that way; he got stories from Stan about what it was like in the locker room and how it felt to spend a significant portion of his life around extremely macho dudes in bulky equipment. Around the time the season was winding down, Stan got shoved against a partition during a practice and ended up needing a bridge. He quietly declined to return to the team sophomore year, and only sometimes complained about his dad giving him shit for it. Kyle feared for the integrity of Stan’s mouth, not to mention the rest of his head, but he sympathized with Randy and Sharon at least a little. Even state school tuition cost more money than zero dollars.

More of a late riser, Kyle forces himself to read for his psych class instead of looking at more dicks. It’s difficult, but he does it, worrying that he’s not really getting what he’s reading because his mind is so stuffed full of cock thoughts that there’s little room for anything else. He stops by a dining hall and gets a muffin and a Styrofoam cup of coffee to go. Stan gave him a travel mug and would chew Kyle out for using a disposable, but fuck it. He rushes back to his room and makes sure his roommate’s not around so he can look at dicks until his lecture at 2, getting muffin crumbs that catch in the tent in his boxer-briefs. Some of them fall into the slit, which is gross, but other than brushing them away distractedly, Kyle’s too busy to do much about it. He gets rid of all the images he’s sure aren’t Stan: guys with different colors of hair, differently shaped chins, guys who have six-packs (which Stan doesn’t, really, just the barest suggestion of one). This is too bad, since one scintillating picture is of a dude underwater in a white shirt, his mammoth uncut cock bobbing under the Grecian perfection of wet cotton clinging to and dislodged from his body. Kyle jerks off to this picture before he deletes it, and as he’s wiping his hand off, he decides to keep the image in a folder on his desktop where he sometimes hides hot pictures for future usage.

As Kyle walks to class, he wonders if this project makes him a pervert or some kind of sex addict. Stan is done with class for the day and texting him all kinds of irrelevant things; he dropped by a diner for a late lunch, which he insists on calling “brunch.” Here’s a picture of two eggs sunny side up on a platter with greasy hashbrown potatoes studded with flecks of mushroom and pearl onion, a big slice of ham, and a hunk of cornbread. It’s all smothered in chili. “Wish you were here,” Stan’s written.

“Fuck you,” Kyle writes back.

“I would have’ve gotten sausage but I assume you’re over it right now.”

Kyle ignores the typo and writes back, “Don’t be such a ham.” In reply, he gets a string of eggplant emojis and a little lady face sticking its tongue out.

The worst thing about this psych class is that it’s a lecture and it also has Kenny McCormick in it. Kyle has actually been impressed that Kenny’s never begged him for notes and also somehow manages not to sleep through class too much. It’s kind of a feat, since he works early shifts at a coffee shop Kyle would never patronize, since they only have sugar, no sweetener. Having a huge beard seems to be a requirement of working there, which maybe explains how Kenny got the job despite never having drunk coffee in his life. He also has rough tattoos on the knuckles of his left hand that spell out the word “life,” which is embarrassing. Kyle remembers the week Craig Tucker figured out how to do that in high school, charged fifteen bucks a letter, and promptly got suspended. Kyle can’t imagine Kenny paying sixty dollars for something so stupid, but he also forgot Kenny existed in between the Thursday lecture last week and this one, wherein Kenny is now berating Kyle for leaving the bar before he arrived last night.

“Well, it’s not my problem you were late,” Kyle says, hoping Kenny will leave so he can sit in the back corner and peruse penis shots for the ten minutes before class starts.

“I was taking a nap,” says Kenny, “because I work at 6.”

“Whatever, it was a dumb party.”

“Some chick in Bebe’s sorority said you were getting pretty tight with Stan before you left.”

“We’re like — ugh, what?”

“That’s sort of a non-answer.”

“Well, we’re friends, Kenny, what?”

“I thought Stan was dating that swimmer dude?”

“What swimmer dude?”

“I don’t know, they came into the shop last week, and he paid for Stan’s Yirgacheffe.”

“No he didn’t,” Kyle says, though he feels sick suddenly. “I spend like 70 percent of my non-work time with Stan, so I think I’d know if he was dating a swimmer.”

“Maybe they boned,” says Kenny, “and came in for like a post-bone coffee or something.”

“Shut up, he’s got class all morning.”

“And you know his whole schedule?”

“Yeah, I do.” The room is beginning to feel very full, and Kyle is beginning to feel like he needs to track Stan down and demand immediate answers. How else will he ever settle this?

“I’m just reporting.”

“Kenny, have you made any friends in college? Why did you need to take this class with me?”

“I’m a psych major,” says Kenny, sounding really hurt.

“Ugh!” Kyle pulls out his phone. “I have shit to do. I don’t need you stressing me out.”

“What kind of shit?”

Kyle realizes he meant looking at pictures of penises. “I just — fuck this, I’m changing seats.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I can’t deal with this right now — I’m working on something important. I need singular focus!”

“Like a column?”

“I dunno, fuck, Kenny, ugh.” Kyle puts his head in his hands with his elbows on his lap and therefore fails to change seats before the lecture starts up.

When it’s over, Kenny says, “You know you can talk to me if you’re stressed, right? You don’t have to write me off just because I’m South Park trash or whatever.”

“Well, why would I do something like that? We both are.” Kyle shrugs. “I’ve got work to do. I’ve gotta go.”

“Well, okay,” says Kenny, “but don’t be a stranger. You could come get a coffee sometime. On the house.”

“I don’t drink coffee unless you have some aspartame I can put in it.”

“You know that shit causes cancer, right?”

“That’s saccharine, and I think that study was disproven.” Kyle hefts his backpack onto his shoulder and scrambles home to get back to his project, blowing off his afternoon class. It’s another lecture, for his poli sci double-major, on the rise of fascism. The professor is British, doesn’t take attendance, and gives out comprehensive typed notes that cover his entire curriculum. Kyle actually likes to listen to the guy lilt through background on twentieth-century economics, but blowing it off today is a no-brainer. He stumbles home telling himself: don’t think about Red Rocks, don’t think about Red Rocks.

Around dinnertime, Kyle hits a snag: he’s narrowed it down to six pictures, and he has no idea which is Stan. And, actually, it’s possible that Kyle has moved through his data too quickly, because in some of these pictures, the guy has an erection, and try as Kyle might, and embarrassed as he might be to have to admit it, he can’t tell if some of these guys with boners have foreskins or not. Because Stan is uncut, so, that’s important. Or at least, Kyle assumes Stan’s uncut. He’s pretty sure? He’s always thought so. 

He clicks through his stack of images in Preview, ashamed to have gotten so close yet feeling so far away from the answer.

Well, now it’s time for dinner, and Kyle’s hungry, and typically he’d call Stan and ask if he wanted to roll up to the food court where he can exchange his meal plan for a sub sandwich with a fountain drink and a bag of Doritos. (It’s Quiznos, thank god — not that Quiznos is any good, but Subway … he can’t do Subway right now. Maybe never again. Which is too bad, because they make a weird cheese-encrusted bread that Kyle craves all of the time, to the point where he smells it in his dreams. It’s really a shame. Stan does not feel sorry for him, on account of “those poor girls.” Which is fair, but — that bread…) But when Kyle goes for his phone, he realizes Stan hasn’t texted him all afternoon, and his last message was full of eggplants.

For the first time since literally the summer between high school and college, Kyle decides to text Kenny.

“Do you want to grab dinner?” he asks.

“You woke me up from my nap,” Kenny writes back, too quickly to be believed.

“Sorry. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah but ur an asshole so why shold I get dinner with you?”

“I’m sorry I called you South Park trash,” Kyle replies. Then a half second later, he follows himself up with, “Wait, you called yourself South Park trash, I didn’t call you that. Not sorry.” Then, since Kenny doesn’t reply immediately, Kyle writes, “Admittedly it sounds like something I’d say.”

“Apology excepted.”

Kenny shows up at the food court wearing a floor-length afghan coat and a scarf that looks like a discarded cape from one of his little sister’s Halloween costumes. He looks more like a hobo than Eric Cartman could ever possibly have dreamed, even when he was calling Kenny a hobo on the playground in grade school.

“Admit it,” Kenny says, tugging on the furry labels of his ridiculous coat. “You’re jealous of my hot nonbinary look.”

“Non-what? Kenny, you have a full beard.”

“Do you wish you could grow a beard like this?”

“I’ve never tried. Look, Kenny, you’re exhausting. Let’s get a sandwich.” Kyle is still waiting for his sandwich to come off the heater conveyer belt or whatever Quiznos uses to melt sandwich cheese at the point when Kenny is checking out. After Kyle fills up a cup with diet Dr. Pepper and grabs a bag of Sun Chips, the cashier tells him that Kenny said Kyle is buying his dinner. 

“Why would you let him walk away without paying for his meal?”

“He said you were gonna pay for it.” She’s a student worker, surely, and she seems bored. 

“What? He doesn’t deserve it! Ugh. Fine.” He pulls his ID out of his pocket, which is fun to do balancing his tray in his other hand. “Fine, swipe it twice.”

“You’re literally the worst,” Kyle says, sitting down to find that Kenny is inhaling his sandwich, miraculously without getting marinara sauce on his beard and/or scarf-cape and/or coat. “I hope that sandwich is the best thing you’ve ever eaten.”

“It’s Quiznos,” Kenny says through a stuffed face, “so, you know, it’s passable.”

“You’re welcome,” Kyle snipes. He wonders what people think of him, sitting here with Kenny, whose very being is imbued with the scent of coffee grounds and who looks like he wandered off the set of a film reenactment of Altamont. Kyle, on the other hand, is wearing what he is always wearing, which is some outfit made of up whatever clothes happened to be clean, probably jeans and a shirt bought for him by his mother, and also a blue Patagonia pullover that makes him look thin, according to the sales clerk at Patagonia. It’s too cold for just a pullover, and he’s jealous of Kenny’s afghan and wishes he’d worn his toggle coat. Then again, a guy at the free orientation concert back in September told Kyle this pullover makes his ass look like “a burrito.” When Kyle had asked what the fuck  _that_  meant, the guy had said, “Like I want to eat it.” After a couple of weeks of texting, Kyle had let him, though the dude himself had turned out to be a build-a-wall/deport-everyone-type Republican, which is the one style of politics Kyle can’t tolerate in other people, because he’s a Spanish/poli sci double major and, well, that’s the kind of thinking that would make it pretty hard for him to eventually get a job. In retrospect, now that he’s sitting here thinking about it instead of watching Kenny eat, he wonders if the burrito line was racist, not that he’s in a good position to judge, though probably a better one than other white people, he tells himself, although Jews are actually white-passing and not actually white, Kyle thinks, and so yeah, maybe he does know. People should listen to him. He should not have had sex with that guy because joking about burritos is racist. Well, it’s in the past.

“Are you going to eat your food?” Kenny asks. He’s crumpling up his napkin, and he throws it onto his tray.

“I’m saving it for later,” Kyle says, sitting up straighter. 

“So what’s up?”

“What? Nothing.”

“Kyle, we’ve known each other for 20 years. You haven’t asked me to hang out with you ever.”

“That’s not true,” Kyle says.

“It’s so true. In high school you would only call me when you needed me to tell you who was having a party, and now we’ve been at school here for three years, and you haven’t texted me at all, and we only run into each other at like, bars, or back home buying returned merchandise on sale at Target the day after Christmas.”

“Okay, other than this winter, when has that happened? It’s just not true — I used to ask you to hang out with me all the time, back in like, elementary school.”

“No, you didn’t,” says Kenny. “Your mom would force you to. Or I’d just sort of, I dunno, invite myself along.”

“Okay, but what’s your point?” Kyle asks.

“What do you  _want_?”

Kyle could argue this, but he’s tired, and hungry from not eating his dinner, and ultimately horny. So he sits up as straight as he possibly can and says, matter-of-factly, “I need you to help me identify Stan’s dick in a series of six pictures I’ve downloaded from Tumblr.”

“Uh, what?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah. Well, that’s — why do you need my help?

“I assume you know what it looks like. Stan’s dick,” Kyle clarifies.

“Yes, I got that. Why would  _I_  know what it looks like?”

“Well, I assume you’ve seen it?”

“Why, Broflovski,  _why_  would I have seen Stanley Marsh’s dick?”

“You guys were on the hockey team together in high school,” Kyle says, bluntly.

Kenny sighs and finally slips out of his coat. He’s wearing a COW DAYS 20XX T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Kyle has the same one, or he had the same one — it’s butter-yellow, and he can’t remember if it was in the last bag of shit his mother took to the Ark to donate or not. 

“How many sports pornos have you watched that you seem to have the misunderstanding that being on a team with someone means I’ve seen their boner?”

“Not his boner, just, you know, his penis  _generally_. Flaccid or not.”

“ _Or_   _not_ ,” Kenny repeats, airily. “Yeah, sorry, can’t help you, haven’t seen it. Not since we were kids. I mean, like, babies in preschool. And if I recall correctly, you were there too, so, I don’t think I can help you.”

“Okay. What do you mean, though, that being on a sports team doesn’t mean you see other people’s dicks? Don’t you shower together?”

“Maybe some guys shower together, but I’m pretty sure most high school boys in Park County, Colorado would rather go home in their sweaty gear than get naked and breezily hang out together. Sorry if I killed your little fantasy about getting banged inside of a locker or something.”

“Not  _inside_  of one,” Kyle says.

“Oh. Well, okay. Anyway. Haven’t  _you_  seen Stan’s dick?”

“Nope.”

“Never?”

“I swear. I promise.  _Never_.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Well, you don’t have to believe me! But, no, I haven’t, which is why I’m asking for help!”

“How did this happen? I would have assumed — how could you possibly  _not_  have seen it? Ever?”

“I don’t know, Kenny, who did you have a crush on in high school?”

“Multiple people,” said Kenny, “but I’m not BFFs and/or life partners with them three years after graduating.” 

“Well, I’m sure you didn’t manage to fuck all of those people – like, sometimes you don’t end up getting together. Or seeing each other naked, anyway.”

“Like it matters,” says Kenny, rubbing his eyes. “Well, are you going to show me these six Tumblr dicks or not?”

“Yeah,” Kyle says. He gets up and goes to sit with Kenny on the other side of the table, sighing. “It matters to me,” Kyle says when he’s seated. He gets his phone out and gets his folder of dick pics from the Cloud.

“This is a fancy set up you’ve got here,” says Kenny. “Is that an iPhone?”

“It’s a Droid.”

“Oh.” 

Kenny’s coffee scent is especially powerful, and Kyle has to force himself not to gag as he queues up the cocks. “If you told me when I was 12 that I’d be looking at dick pics with you in adulthood, I would have told on you.”

“Adulthood is an amorphous concept,” says Kenny, “but thank you for your honesty.”

In his pocket, Kenny has an all-weather notebook. “This is what they gave me for my birthday this year,” he says. “This tiny seven-dollar notepad.”

“Who’s they?” Kyle asks.

“My parents.” Kenny sighs, which he seems to do a lot when he’s not being consciously goofy. “Okay, well, let’s do this.” Carefully, he removes three sheets from his notebook and writes DICK 1, DICK 2, and so on at the top of each page, right below the perforations. 

“Why’d they give you that?” Kyle asks.

“Because they haven’t been to college so they don’t know this isn’t adequate for taking notes on.”

“Oh.”

“Hmm.” Kyle’s not sure if that’s in reply to his ‘oh’ or the pictures Kenny’s scrolling through on Kyle’s phone. “That’s a nice one,” he says, expanding one of the pictures. “I’d hope this one was Stan’s if I were you. I mean, if this is some, like, bizarre test to gain entry into his pants.”

“It is,” says Kyle. “I guess. Though now I’m kind of — who, or, what did you say about some swimmer?”

Under DICK 4 Kenny writes, “really nice!!” and then scrolls to the next picture. “Just that Stan came in with him, and they got a two-person Chemex to split and that guy paid for it.”

“How’d you know he was a swimmer?”

“Wet hair,” says Kenny. “Speedo-brand bag.”

“Ah.” Kyle is trying to suppress the voice in his head that whispers _“Red Rocks”_ every single time he sees or even hears about Stan in the context of other guys. The fact is that Stan seemingly has no other close male friends, only girls, or at least no guys he spends time with regularly. Besides Kyle, anyway. He never mentions other guys at all, and so Kyle assumes it’s because he’s sleeping with people, and doesn’t want Kyle to know. Kyle has figured that two can play that game, and so he’s spent all of college hiding his liaisons from Stan, too. In Kyle’s fantasies, they’ll one day fall into a relationship where there are no other guys to hide from each other, because they are the only other one. It’s a witless fantasy because Kyle’s never had the guts to vocalize it to anyone off the locked LiveJournal that for five years has served as his diary.

“What’s it like?” Kenny interrupts Kyle’s train of thought as he’s inspecting the last image in the series, in which a guy’s hairy hand clutches his testicles, the other draped over his own chest.

“What’s what like?” Kyle asks.

“I don’t know,” says Kenny. “Being in love with Stan.”

“Who said I loved him? I just want to sleep with him.”

“You know I know you don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you want.”

Before Kenny can reply, Kyle’s phone makes the sound of a phaser firing, and a notice pops up in the corner to tell him he’s got a message. “Someone’s texting you,” says Kenny.

“So, check who it is.”

Kenny does. “It’s Stan. He wants to … get dinner with you.”

“Just — ugh.” Kyle snatches his phone away and writes, “I’m hanging out at the Quiznos.”

Stan writes back, “Yuck.” Kyle is tapping his phone, unsure what to say, when Stan sends another message: “I’m coming by.”

“Ugh.” Kyle thrusts the phone back into Kenny’s hands. “He’s coming here.”

“So, should we stop with the dick thing?”

“No, just — let’s work through this.”

“Okay.” Kenny pauses, looking at Kyle expectantly. “Can you put your PIN in?”

“It’s 7826.” Kyle blushes when Kenny taps in the numbers, but there are no letters on the keypad, and so Kenny probably isn’t judging him.

“This isn’t Stan,” Kenny announces, as soon as the last dick pic is back on the screen.

“How can you be so sure?” Kyle asks.

“He doesn’t have hair on the backs of his hands like this,” says Kenny, and he shuffles the papers so that he can write “NO” in big letters under DICK 6.

“I should have thought of that,” Kyle mumbles. He pulls open his bag of Sun Chips and is stuffing them into his face when Stan arrives, with a hoodie on under his toggle coat and lovely black jeans that skim the curves of his calves. Kyle says “hi” and, while Kenny and Stan are chatting, fantasizes about Stan’s powerful legs on either side of his ass, holding it up while he fucks Kyle in slow, agonizing drags.

Kyle catches Kenny saying, “It’s funny, we were actually talking about you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Stan asks.

“Kenny, no!”

“It’s not like he doesn’t know what you’re up to,” Kenny says.

“I actually wasn’t sure he was going to follow through,” says Stan.

“He’s got nothing better to do.”

Kyle groans. “This is so humiliating.”

“Here.” Stan pushes Kenny over so he can sit down on the bench with them. “Let me help you guys out.”

“I have lots better to do. And, no thank you, I can figure it out myself!”

"Kyle," says Stan, "I didn't mean for you to like, go nuts over this. Like, you enlisted Kenny to help you? Greg Kaplan said you weren't in your fascism lecture. Did you skip it to look at dicks?"

"Maybe I did. And I'm not going nuts, and also, who the fuck is Greg Kaplan?"

"He's the TA in your fascism lecture," Stan repeats. "He does work study at the front desk in my dorm."

"Okay? Are you keeping tabs on me?"

"Every single time I sign you into my dorm, he's the guy who checks your ID."

"Well, sorry I wasn't paying attention to the guy checking my ID when I go to your dorm!"

"How much work study does that guy do that he's there every single time Kyle signs into your dorm?" Kenny asks.

"I was exaggerating," Stan says. He reaches for Kyle's drink and takes a sip, without asking.

"Do you want some of mine?" Kenny proffers Stan his own drink, the straw tip greasy with the faintish pink tinge of pearly lip balm.

Stan shakes his head and puts the drink down. “That’s okay,” he says.

“We should follow each other on Tumblr,” Kenny says. “I’m mysteriousprincesskenny.” He pulls out his phone. “Who are you? I’ll friend you.”

“I don’t actually have a blog,” Stan says. Kyle wonders if that’s a lie, because he’s obviously invested in tracking dick blogs or whatever. Maybe all kinds of porn blogs; Kyle follows plenty of them himself, but he doesn’t use his actual blog.

Kyle asks, “Then how did you get your dick on a blog?”

“You e-mail it anonymously.”

“If you have to e-mail it, it’s not anonymous.”

“Kyle, you — you just make up a spam Hotmail account, or something.”

“I don’t think Hotmail exists anymore.”

“Okay, then a fucking Outlook account or whatever — the point is, you make up some garbage account like emailingyourdick69 at Outlook or whatever, and you don’t sign it. Or you submit it anonymously. Depending on the blog, I don’t know, I’m majoring in English, not — dick submission.”

Kenny snorts at the phrase, but Kyle narrows his eyes. “And then what happens?”

“The person who runs the blog posts it and writes about it. You apparently went on the blog, so, that’s what happens.”

“You know,” says Kenny, “I was also featured on a blog.”

“What blog?” Stan asks.

“A non-binary fashion blog.”

Stan and Kyle look at each other.

“Oh,” says Stan. “That’s cool. Did they like, grade your outfit?”

“No. It’s very positive, it’s a positive safe space. They don’t grade people.”

“That’s cool,” Stan says. Kyle hates that Stan seems like he means it, because to Kyle, rating people’s outfits to foster a positive safe space sounds like the saddest project in human existence. Then again, Kyle’s had his appearance judged pretty harshly in the past, and as a weird-looking little kid, his admittedly unconventional looks were subjected to unfavorable ranking by his peers. If he weren’t aware of how hard he was projecting, he’d feel worse about his lack of charity. But, he’s totally aware, and so he doesn’t.

“I have to go,” says Kenny, and he pulls his coat back on. “I work in the morning.” It’s the first time Stan’s seen it on Kenny’s body and not pooled around his thighs, and Stan does a double-take. “Cool coat,” he says, and Kyle prays he isn’t serious.

Beaming down at them, Kenny says, “I’d guess number four if I were you.”

“Number four what?” Stan asks.

“He labeled all the dicks.”

“Oh.” Stan is visibly eyeing Kyle’s sandwich.

“Well, I can’t resist a good project,” says Kenny. “I’m curious to see what develops here.” He starts walking away, and Kyle’s about to breathe a sigh of relief when Kenny actually turns around and walks back over to them. “I like hanging out with you guys.”

“Yeah, we should do this more often,” Stan says, and Kyle wants to fucking stab him.

When he’s gone, Stan leans over and says, “Can I have part of your sandwich?”

Kyle sighs and begins to unwrap it. “Everyone’s always taking from me, never giving.”

“I’m trying to give you my dick here,” Stan reminds him.

“Fucking Kenny McCormick just conned me into buying his fucking dinner, like we’re back in seventh grade and he’s trying to get me to buy him dollar-menu cheeseburgers.”

“I think his family was literally starving.”

“I know that! I don’t begrudge Kenny is hunger or whatever, Stan, it’s just that I’m not a food bank. There are actual food banks, if he’s so hungry, you know?”

“You can spare him the meal, Kyle.”

“It’s not that meal that I’m worried about, it’s more that — why didn’t his parents go to a food bank? I feel like we used to do all those Thanksgiving can drives at school, and so forth, what was that for?”

“Shut up about Kenny’s family,” says Stan, and it’s upsetting because he sounds like he’s invested in that. Kyle prefers Stan’s bitter sarcasm; when Stan bleeds earnest concern, it’s persuasive enough to get Kyle to care, too, and when Kyle cares about something, he starts driving himself nuts, cf. this dick-sleuthing activity. Also, his entire decades-long association with Stan.

“Sorry, just — can I split your sandwich? I’ll pay you back if you care.”

“I thought you hated Quiznos.”

“I do, just.” Stan sighs. “Forget it, I don’t care.”

Kyle gives Stan half of the sub and watches him eat it. He’s going nuts because it reminds him that Kenny said that some swimmer paid for Stan’s coffee, and is this what Stan does these days? Preys on unsuspecting guys for sex and sustenance? And not even good stuff, just mediocre food court sandwiches and sour-tasting fair-trade coffee. If Kyle were asked, he’d blame that sicko at Red Rocks for grooming Stan into some kind of free-love concert-bathroom monster, but in the rational section of his brain that he preserves for homework and talking himself off the ledge, Kyle knows that he’s only singling out that one incident out because he can’t put a narrative behind Stan’s other partners. Maybe he put his dick up on that site as a sex signal, an entreaty.

“So do you have a guess?” Stan asks this when he’s finished the half-sandwich he pilfered from Kyle.  “Did you at least narrow it down?”

“I’m down to six. Well, five. Kenny and I eliminated one.”

“Show me?”

Dick 1 is flaccid, cut, and wreathed in short, curly hairs that are completely localized around the base. The worst thing about this project is that Kyle’s almost certain Stan’s got a big fat erection that would literally leave him sore, and it’s nearly impossible to know if that’s the case when he’s looking at a picture of a soft dick. Also, it’s very problematic for Kyle to consider the fact that maybe he just wants Stan to have a big, hard dick because he’s been trained by many years of porn-consumption to expect and want that.

The next picture is of another soft prick, also cut, but the guy is shaved, and so Kyle can’t rule is out. But it’s a bad picture, objectively, and taken from such an obscure angle that Kyle can’t be sure what this guy’s body looks like outside of the dick itself. It’s true that in and of itself, a Brazilian doesn’t strike Kyle as particularly like something Stan would do, either to himself, or by paying someone else to do it. Dick 3 is hard, but the dude is wearing panties, so other than the little bit of head that peeks out of one lacy leg opening, it’s impossible to know what to make of it.

“Do you think I’d wear panties?” Stan asks. Kyle just shakes his head, like, he hopes not.

Then there’s Dick 4, which Kyle prays isn’t Stan’s because he now associates it with Kenny. He glances at the little torn-out sheet that says “really nice!!” and Kyle thinks about the fact that, yes, that one’s a beautiful dick. It’s hard and darker than the rest of the owner’s skin, dusky and full and maybe dripping a little; it’s impossible to say for certain, and Kyle resents that Kenny’s ruined this one for him. The fifth dick is less beautiful, but it’s got a lovely bit of foreskin that just swaddles the peachy-toned head. That’s another that Kyle’s been hoping for, because it’s such a lovely image: light bathing the entire picture, and a latticework shadow etched onto the sitter’s stomach. It was the best-rated of all of the pictures, a veritable A+. But the thing is, the picture is beside the point — fuck the picture, honestly. Kyle wants an A+ dick in the flesh, wants one that’s so ideal he could put it on his mantle like an objet d’art. He doesn’t have a mantle, though, and actually, he never did; at his parents’ place in South Park, they display their nice things inside an old-ladyish china cabinet. Regardless, the best thing, to Kyle, possessing the ideal, and this runs all the way down to his years-long fantasy of turning an erstwhile hockey champion from a best friend into a lover. It runs so deep that Kyle even demands even a partner with a flawless, straining dick. So what if it’s hidden, so what if no one else gets to see it? He wants something better than what everyone else has. And the idea of sharing it with other people is crushing.

“Okay,” Kyle says. He still hasn’t managed to take a bite of his sandwich. “It’s number four, isn’t it?”

Stan glances up to meet Kyle’s gaze; he just devoured half a sub, but he still looks hungry. “Why don’t we go back to your place,” he says slowly, “and you can find out?”

Kyle doesn’t throw away his Quiznos garbage; it’s all he can do to grab his phone as he staggers out after Stan. Kyle is now impervious to the weather and has half a mind to just slam back into the nearest tree and let Stan’s hands do the rest. Still, he lets Stan lead him back to his dorm, where Kyle manages to sign Stan in and fails to act cool for the work-study sophomore on front desk duty. Kyle forgets to collect his ID and has to walk back over there to get it. He stands there waiting for her to give Stan’s back, too, and she politely says, “No, I keep this one.” Kyle blushes when he sees Stan beaming at him and holding the elevator open.

Once the door’s been secured, Kyle pulls Stan onto the bed across from his own, and they start kissing without so much as removing their jackets. The heater’s still clanging at full potency, and Kyle can feel his undershirt sticking to his chest beneath his pullover. Stan is pressing Kyle to the unmade bed with one forearm; his other hand is between Kyle’s legs, kneading at Kyle’s hard dick under Kyle’s stiff, cheap jeans.

Kyle accounts for the specifics as Stan helps him wriggle free of his Patagonia: this is the first time Kyle’s made out with someone when he’s sober. (He’d had to get good and loaded to text burrito guy to come over, and bring a dental dam, and hurry.) Stan is an awkward kisser; not bad, but he can’t get a rhythm going, and Kyle finds it kind of distracting. Also, Stan tastes like pesto caesar. It isn’t awful, except in contrast to his hair, which smells like the cheap drugstore-brand coconut shampoo Kyle can still visualize in the corner of the bathtub Stan shared with his sister. It’s the most delicious scent in the world to Kyle, and he realizes that he feels so safe. This is the safest he’s ever felt. He didn’t realize how much he missed that smell since he creepily opened up the bottle and took a whiff of it back in high school; it brings him back to the corner of the bar and Bebe’s birthday; to the bowling alley where she celebrated her sweet sixteen after he and Stan escaped form that foul-smelling bathroom; and to Stan peeling off his little knit cap before taking school pictures. Kyle feels so safe that he gets naked, really naked, which he’s never done with a guy before, either. He lets Stan kiss his collarbones and grin at his soft stomach and rub his palms along the bumpy skin of Kyle’s ass like it’s some holy relic, the main fucking attraction.

“I always hoped I’d get to do this with you,” Kyle confesses. He now wishes he’d waxed, or douched, or something.

“Me too.”

“I guess it was bound to happen,” Kyle says. “I always knew we’d fuck. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever.”

“Me too!” Stan is beaming, though he also looks like he’s not sure which way he’s going, or like he’s at the German buffet at Epcot and he can’t figure how many meats is too many to load up on his plate.

The thought of it makes Kyle say, “I hope I stack up to everyone else.”

“Every who else?” Stan asks.

“The other guys you’ve been with.”

Stan actually laughs. He _laughs_. He laughs, and says, “I have never been with any other guys.”

Kyle bolts up on his roommate’s bed. “Are you shitting me?”

“No.” Stan laughs again. “Now I kind of feel nervous.”

“Wait.” Kyle now feels very weird that he is naked and Stan isn’t. “What about that swimmer?”

“What swimmer?”

Kyle shakes his head. This is incredible. “What about that guy at Red Rocks?”

“Red Rocks?” Stan repeats. “Kyle, I was 14.”

“I know, but—”

“Well, we didn’t fuck.” Stan stops smiling. “I mean, he basically molested me.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, it’s okay,” Stan says. He starts to take off his jacket, untoggling the toggles. “But isn’t that what you’d call it? That guy was like, an old man.”

“Is that how you think of it?”

“I really haven’t thought of it for a while. I guess it just doesn’t count. Is that okay? I thought you wanted to see my dick.”

“Oh, I do,” Kyle agrees.

“You’ll be the first,” Stan tells him.

“What about those people on Tumblr?”

“Well, they didn’t really _see_ it! Just a picture of it.” His voice gets low: “It’s not the same.”

“So, I’m your first?” Kyle asks. And Stan says, “Uh huh.” He grabs Kyle by the wrists and pushes him down against the bed again.

Kyle gets Stan’s shirt off before getting impatient. Dirty talk isn’t one of Kyle’s fortes, so his stumbles when he says, “Can you take your pants off? I want to see if I was right.”

“What do you think?” Stan asks, no differently than if he were asking if Kyle wanted to go see a movie or what food truck he wanted to drop by before class. “Do I look like my picture?” A thrill makes Kyle’s heart pound: he was right.

“Even better, honestly,” Kyle says. He pauses to grasp Stan’s erection, tracing his thumb up the brief trail of pre-come that leads to the slit. “Pictures never look as good as real life.”

Stan is trembling; they both are. It’s a mix of nerves and, in Stan’s case, the fact that Kyle is rubbing the head of Stan’s dick lightly with the pad of his thumb while looking him straight in the eyes. “Well, I said you could do what you wanted with it,” Stan says. “So, um, it’s all yours.”

“And I can do anything I want with it?”

“Yeah,” Stan breathes. “Anything.”

“Can I fuck myself on it?”

“I think so.”

“Do you want that?”

“It’s your prize,” says Stan, “so it’s really up to you.”

“It’s your first time,” says Kyle.

“Our first time,” Stan corrects. “I mean, together.”

“Are we gonna do this again?”

Kyle plants his lips on Stan’s. They’ve never kissed before tonight, but it’s clear that they can go from zero to sixty in a heartbeat, Kyle’s hand slipping from Stan’s dick and clasping Stan’s shoulders. Kyle squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that he can’t see a thing; he can feel Stan’s body against his and taste Stan’s clean, invigorating spit against Stan’s clever tongue, can smell Stan’s Old Spice pine scent around his underarms, and hear the gentle, sloppy rhythm of their lips against one another’s.

It’s not until Kyle is shocked by the wetness at the tip of Stan’s dick against his thigh that Kyle grasps it again and says, “I want to feel this thing inside of me.”

“I’ve never done it before,” Stan says, pulling away. He’s blushing, and Kyle gets up. They’re terribly naked now, and Kyle feels dizzy as he roots around in his desk drawers for a condom. He finds one, shaking as he checks the expiration date. It’s three Mays away. Kyle rips it open.

“Get on my bed,” Kyle orders, and he pinches the slimy, latex tip. “I hope this fits that big dick.”

Stan rolls his eyes and says, “It’s not _that_ big, okay,” but Kyle couldn’t care less. They’re going to fuck, finally, and as he’s rolling the condom down Stan’s drooling dick, he reassures himself that it’s not going to stack up against his fantasies, but it will be something different. It’ll be new, and it’ll be real, and he’ll remember it forever. Without proper lube, Kyle jerks himself to get some pre-come into his palm, and he’s really fucking glad that he’s neither drunk nor looking to get this over with as quickly as possible. It takes some effort to get all the way seated, and Kyle can barely stand to look at Stan’s face. He’s sporting a look of concentration mixed with disbelief, satisfaction, and shock. He kisses Kyle’s neck a million times, like that will make things go faster. Why should it go any faster, Kyle wonders? It’s been five years, five years and one day. That’s pretty much forever.

They don’t say, “I love you.” They’ve said it before, and not always in pleasant company. It wouldn’t add anything. It’s not half as good as passing out sweaty against each other in a cramped, extra-long twin, Kyle’s roommate banging on the door for five minutes before he screams, “God fucking damn it!” and stomps off, down the hall.

* * *

Stan’s got those early-morning classes, and so he’s gone when Kyle wakes up. The faint memory of being woken when Stan made his escape around 7:30 visits Kyle as he pokes at the disposable lenses he never takes out of his eyes and reaches for the nearest open drink — a half-full Arizona fruit punch can, in this case. It tastes terrible, which is why Kyle never finished it in the first place. He’s got a couple of texts, though; his phone says there are three, and he hopes like hell they’re all from Stan. To Kyle’s dismay, only one is, and he saves that one for last, to savor reading. The other two are from his roommate, who’s written him a downright screed: “If you’re going to sexile me every night this week could you please let me know in advance! I had a calc test this am & without calculator probably failed which isn’t what I” … “need right now! A little courtesy is all I ask, kyle, Im perfectly happy to spend the night w/Martha but you have to let me know, fuck.” Kyle feels a little bad, though he’d feel worse — and would probably reply, maybe even with an apology — if he weren’t in a mad rush to see what Stan has to say.

It’s three eggplants. 

Furious, like really stunned, Kyle types back, “ARE YOU SERIOUS,” no question mark. Though he knows Stan’s probably in some seminar in which he’s discussing serious literature Kyle would only know to describe as “gay,” he’s so pissed that he chugs the end of the fruit punch and, feeling disgusting, rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, wanting to cry. It does occur to him, while he’s sweating under his flannel duvet and staring at the curves of his lumpy body under the covers, that Stan doesn’t mean anything by it, that he’s probably just being silly — maybe he’s hurt by Kyle’s sheer sexual knowledge and has now realized the extent of Kyle’s sluttiness. Maybe Kyle himself should feel bad. He thinks to himself that he feels bad already, that he didn’t do anything wrong, that Stan’s not laughing behind his back with Kenny somewhere as they commend themselves and each other on how their years-long scheme to humiliate Kyle totally and utterly has come to fruition, finally, well done. Kyle thinks back on what Stan’s told him and on just how completely unhinged and bonkers such a theory is. He’s not important enough to be hated and persecuted on such a level, he tells himself. For the first time in many years, he lacks any drive to log in and write about something that would make a great journal entry.

Kyle’s roommate bangs on the door, and Kyle gets up to let him in. He’s too depressed to put pants on, so Kyle hopes Steve doesn’t mind getting a nice view of the crusty dried fluids in the hair on Kyle’s ass. Much to Kyle’s chagrin, when Steve sees him, the anger turns to pity and says, “It’s okay if you’re going through some shit, man. Have you ever talked to anyone at mental health counseling?”

“You know what, Steve, fuck you, Martha’s like a five or a six _at best_.” It’s the meanest thing he can think to say, and even as it’s coming out of his mouth he hates himself for saying something so petty and so sexist, but honestly, fuck Steve.

“I’m so glad this year is over in six weeks.” Steve angrily grabs his calculator and some notebook from his cluttered desk, changes into a new pair of jeans, and storms out.

As soon as Steve is gone, Kyle puts on a pair of boxer-briefs and sits on his bed, checking his phone again. Here’s another message from Stan; Kyle’s heart seizes as he reads it: “Meet me at the TicTacTaco truck at noon?” Kyle is so pissed he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He hates tacos, and he hates himself, and he wishes he hadn’t walked into such an obvious and blatant attack on his own self-worth.

Kenny texts him. Of course he does. “Did you figure out which dick it was?”

Kyle writes back, “I had it in me eight hours ago,” which he instantly regrets sending. Instead, he should have invented a time machine and gone back to junior year of high school so that he could sabotage Kenny’s SAT scores or something in order to make sure he never gets into college and rots back in South Park with the rest of his family. Even as he’s thinking this, though, Kyle is too stupid to learn, because Kenny calls him immediately after receiving Kyle’s text, and Kyle fucking answers.

“What?” Kyle says.

“So you guessed right, huh? What happened?”

“What do you think happened, Kenny? I fucked my life up, again, fuck.”

“Was it bad?” Kenny asks.

“I don’t want to tell you the details of my sex life.”

“Forgive me for being confused,” says Kenny, “but such a position is, like, a total reversal on your recent, um … position.”

“Where are you?” Kyle asks.

“I’m getting off my coffee shift soon. Do you want a coffee? I can make you a mocha. A really sugary one.”

“I only use—”

“Equal, got it.”

“Aspartame.”

“That’s what’s in Equal.”

“Well,” says Kyle, “I’m not so picky that it has to be Equal-brand aspartame, I’m very open to generics.”

“Okay, here’s a little trick. There’s a Starbucks on campus, it’s on the way — why don’t you go in there and steal a handful of Equal packets—”

“All right!” Kyle says, and against his better judgment, he hangs up and puts his jeans on.

Kyle walks into Kenny’s shop at 11:35, according to the clock. He’s tired, because he hasn’t slept much, and he didn’t have time to dig the mostly dried jizz out of his ass, so it’s kind of itchy, and he feels depraved. He easily spots Kenny, because he’s the least hidden and most obvious character in almost every setting he graces. “I’ll make you that mocha,” he offers.

“No, I don’t actually like coffee.” Kyle drapes himself over the counter. “Why am I so stupid?”

“There’s so many answers,” Kenny says. “Your parents are stupid. You grew up in the country’s lowest-ranked rural school system. You got horny, which is a complication, always. But actually, I think what I should ask you instead is, why do you _feel_ stupid?”

“Because you were right, Kenny. I do love him. And I woke up and — he wasn’t there.”

“Okay, but Kyle, he has class in the morning.” Kenny’s holding a latte in one hand, and he starts to eat the foam out of it with his fingers. Will he get some in his beard, Kyle thinks to himself?

Kyle shakes his head. “He just sent me a text with some fucking penis emojis in it.”

“Maybe he’s diffusing the situation.”

“With eggplants?”

Kenny puts down the latte and leans across the counter. Against Kyle’s wishes, he grabs Kyle by the hands. “I’m a psych major, and I’m doing okay — I’ve got a 3.2, which I think is pretty decent, considering.”

“Considering what? That’s not very good.”

“Considering I work two jobs in addition to going to college?”

“Oh. I didn’t know that. Where’s your other job?”

“I do work study at the ILL desk in the library.”

“Oh. Um, sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry — I actually like it. Just, here’s my unauthorized, mostly uninformed guess based purely on my own experiences. Take it or leave it. I think maybe you built up a lot of your outlook on the idea that once you and Stan got together it would be awesome, and maybe it was. But when you look toward this one big thing that might or might not happen as a driving principle for your whole life, you can hardly _not_ be let down. You know? That’s kind of what I’ve got out of my own life. See?” Kenny lets go of one of Kyle’s hands and makes a first. “See?” he asks again.

“I get it.”

“It’s just life, Kyle, it’s not like it’s me and Craig. It’s not death, exactly.”

“You and Craig? What the fuck, Kenny.”

“I dunno, he liked me in high school, and I kind of led him on and let him give me this stupid fucking tattoo—”

“Wait, wait — I thought you were the person who’d been pining in this scenario.”

“Well, not in _this_ scenario.”

“Where does death come into it?”

“It’s a long story. I mean, I could tell you, if you were _really_ feeling sorry for yourself—”

“Yeah, I actually have to meet Stan at some taco truck in ten minutes,” Kyle says.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Kyle says. “I just want attention.”

“Yes, I see. How about that.” Kenny’s stroking his beard, and Kyle finds it disconcerting.

He hustles over to the truck, which is parked on the corner under what would be the shade of trees in high summer; instead, the scraggly branches scrape the side of the truck every time a wind rolls in. Stan loves food trucks like they’re the height of human civilization, though he also has a knowledge of the New York food scene that’s unbecoming from someone who’s never been there. Stan refuses to pay for a meal plan, even though it’s economical and makes sense if you actually use it, which Kyle does. Kyle, on the other hand, doubts food prepared in the back of a truck with the engine running could be hygienic; he indulges Stan in this because eating out together lets Kyle wallow in the fantasy that they’re a serious adult couple with restaurants they patronize regularly while still making room in their lives, and their wallets, to try new things. This balance is very important to Kyle, theoretically, and he estimates the ideal ration of “their” places to new and adventurous places at 80-20, or maybe 70-30.

Anyway, Stan is here, his back against the truck. There’s a line that’s four or five people deep, and Kyle is annoyed because even if that’s not a lot of people, every fucking food truck takes forever. But that’s to be expected, even if Kyle wishes Stan would have just gotten in line instead of waiting on Kyle, who’s five or ten minutes late. On the other hand, Stan is holding a bouquet of flowers in his hands, holding it out like an Olympic torch, and Kyle can see that the bouquet is trembling. Maybe it’s the wind, or maybe Stan’s nervous; he’s wearing his toggle coat and his hoodie under it again, same black jeans from the night before. Kyle realizes that he hasn’t had time to change. He probably hasn’t been back to his room.

“These are for you,” Stan says, not handing them over.

Kyle looks at Stan’s face, and then at the flowers. It’s a pretty scraggly bouquet, actually, mostly cheap things like mums and artful twigs and baby’s breath. There’s one fat purple rose in the middle, which is tacky, and Kyle can imagine Stan buying this thing at a grocery store as he ran over here, huffing, to try to beat Kyle and surprise him with this little treat.

“I can see that,” Kyle mumbles, looking into Stan’s eyes. Terror — he sees terror in there. “Um, thanks, this is nice of you.”

“I, uh. Fuck.” Stan laughs, and he puts the flowers between his thighs. He crosses his arms. He seems very, very frightened. “I didn’t know if you were gonna come, because you didn’t text me back.”

“Yeah, I didn’t text you back, right. Sorry.” Kyle feels bad now. “I was kind of pissed this morning.”

“Because I wasn’t there?”

“I guess so,” says Kyle. “Or maybe at myself. I don’t know. You didn’t have to get me flowers, Stan. I live in a dorm room.”

“Why were you pissed at yourself?”

“I’m not sure. For wanting you, and getting you, I guess. For not knowing what to do about it,” Kyle says. “Are you dating a guy on the swim team?”

“No?”

“Kenny said you guys went and got a coffee together, and he paid.”

“Oh. Well, yeah. Because we got a two-person pot, and I paid him back later.  We’re not dating, Kyle.”

“Were you, though?”

“No. I have conversations with other people sometimes, you know, that’s something people usually do.”

“I know,” Kyle says. “I know normal people do that.”

“He was thinking about leaving the team, so I told him about my experience.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That losing the scholarship was hard,” says Stan, “but now I have time for other people.” He reaches between his legs and pries out the flowers. He holds them out for Kyle to take. “If you want these,” Stan says.

When Kyle takes them, he clutches them to his chest. “I want to be your boyfriend” comes out of his mouth, when what he’d meant to say was, “Yeah, they’re great, thanks.”

“I don’t know if it counts if we didn’t know it,” Stan replies, “but I feel like you already are.”

“I was so jealous,” Kyle says. He can’t help but grin, feeling so stupid and so self-conscious.

“Of that swimmer guy? His name is Tom, and he’s okay. I’m not into him,” Stan reiterates. “I think he’s dating another swimmer. If you want to go on a double-date.”

Kyle says, “I’ll think about it.” He also thinks about kissing Stan right here, on the side of the taco truck, but he refrains. He decides on the spot to ditch his classes after lunch. Twice in one week is a lot, but it’s worth it. They’ll go back to Kyle’s dorm room and kiss there.

He orders a chimichanga filled with Korean-style bulgogi, kimchi, crème fraiche, and cotija. That’s the kind of thing he’s come to expect from these food trucks. It comes with a little side of shaved daikon radish pickled in apple cider vinegar with red pepper flakes and pepitas. They’re sitting on the curb under the tree branches and in front of the truck, watching the line grow longer. There are twice as many people in it now, and Kyle feels like he’s won, somehow, or beat all of those people who are still waiting to order food, then eat it alone.

Again, Kyle lets Stan pick off his plate. It’s not actually a plate, though, it’s a flimsy little cardboard thing that’s sagging under the greasy weight of Kyle’s chimichanga, and honestly, Kyle’s afraid that Stan might knock even the tiniest bit of bulgogi out of his chimichanga and onto the sidewalk. Kyle is ravenous and is not afraid to show it, dispensing with silverware entirely. Through a full mouth, he says, “Fuck it,” and picks up the chimichanga with one hand while he holds the container with the other.

“Be careful,” Stan says, but Kyle is a pig, and he doesn’t care if Stan knows it. If food falls on the floor, then it falls on the floor.

“Does anyone else know there’s a picture of your dick on Tumblr?” Kyle asks.

Stan is eating a carnitas taco, and he swallows before he answers. “No. That’s only for you.”

Kyle considers adding, “And for Kenny,” but then he doesn’t. Kenny doesn’t count. Besides, in the way that actually matters, it _is_ only for Kyle. He knows that now, and finishes his lunch in peace. He’s actually very horny, and he’s looking forward to his second time with Stan as soon as they’re done eating.

In a cosmic sense, though, he’s finally satisfied.


End file.
